dreadedmonkeygod . net

Ned Batchelder has posted yet another excellent (meaning "agrees with me") post on standards and data representation.

I've had many (many, many, many) discussions on data representation and industry standards over the last year, and it's nice to see that either I'm not insane, or that Ned is insane in the same way that I am.

So-called "Industry Standards" are primarily useful as data exchange standards, not data storage standards. If curating your data is a core business function from which you gain competive advantage, you want the best possible fit between what you know and how you record it. A "standard" will rarely, if ever, match as precisely with what you want to record as a home-grown data representation.

Yes, adopting standards lets you use off-the-shelf tools. I contend that the costs of in-house development aren't costs, they're an investment in getting ahead of your competitors. Using off-the-shelf products is smart when there's no gain to be got from building the tools yourself. It's dumb when it levels a playing field you don't want leveled.

And the third option, extending an existing standard to meet your company's needs, is usually the worst of both worlds: a really expensive data representation that still doesn't exactly do what you want.